In this video we look at one of my used car guys fresh auction special. It is a 2007 Nissan Frontier with the big 4.0 liter in it. His complaint is that the battery dies overnight and also the MIL is coming on. Let's have a look! -Enjoy!
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Hey there, viewers welcome back to the south main auto channel. That's a fresh one here right from the auction uh pa one owner uh, oh seven, nissan frontier! It's got the big four! Oh and she's, four wheel, peel nicimo edition uh the used car guy dropped it off. It's up to us to have a look at. It's got some quirky things going on with it, one of them being uh.

The monitors weren't set and the battery dies. Every time you leave it sitting um, i noticed that when you shut the key off the marker lights turn on and stay on for at least 10 minutes. I thought maybe that was had something to do with the battery going dead. But, however, i can hear this car has been sitting here shut off overnight.

I had a charger on it, nuclear to get the battery up to snuff, and you can hear something in the vehicle is on. You hear this very high frequency, like that. I don't know what it is, but i assume that's probably what's killing our battery too. What i want to do is attempt to get a drive cycle done on it.

So we can see hey, do the monitor stay when you shut the key off. He was concerned about that and b. You know how many lights are going to come on. I did drive it a little bit yesterday.

I got all the monitors except for two of them. It did set a couple pending codes, so i'm going to take insert it up and drive it this morning and see if i can finish a drive cycle. Uh finish the second trip, so those pending codes become mature codes and then you know hopefully at that point i can say: hey use car guy, here's the codes. We have the drive cycle's done and this is why your battery is going dead and that's that so i'm going to do that, i'm going to take it for a rip, get the rest of the drive cycle, hopefully and then we'll take it from there didn't make It too far down main street here, whatever one of the pending codes was fully matured.

So now we have a mill our service engine tune light. There is on it's a code for the fuel level sensor circuit high. I believe it was and then of course we got the classic tire light. I'm gon na keep cruising see if we can get the whole cycle done.

So we got two incompletes five readies two codes. I don't think we're gon na get the evap to run because of the broken fuel gauge, and i think it's the o2 sensor monitor it hasn't run, which is kind of bizarre uh, so yeah. So now we have two pendings two currents so same thing i had yesterday, except they were just both pending, so fuel level, sensor, evap, vent control, shorted and then, as far as what's not run yet is the o2 yeah. So the incomplete, oh nope, never mind it.

Just ran so if we go back to vehicle status, let me probably down to one monitor yeah, so we got one incomplete, which is just the evap, which is understandable, because the fuel level sensor doesn't work, so that is our only incomplete. So i'm happy with that and those are the codes we have so this would have to be fixed in order to run uh. The evap monitor the fuel level sensor. If it doesn't know how much fuel is in it, it usually will stop the event monitor.
So we have this to work with. We have two codes and then we have the fact that you're not gon na get hit in the road here. The fact that the battery goes dead overnight but, like i say, probably foolishly, i should have looked at it before we left to see what that humming noise was, but i'm assuming whatever the problem is it's not going away uh. So let's get started back at the shop folks and just like we mentioned in the previous clip.

Those are the two codes that we have a little sidetracked here. So i do want to show you something uh, and this was, i think, part of something that is wrong, but you can see right now. You know the lights and stuff are not on the marker. Lights do work, however, when you take the ignition key here and you just turn it on everything's cool.

No marker lights are on no back lighting, nothing like that, but when you shut it off for a period of time, these marker lights remain on, so the front and rear marker lights remain on i'm gon na take and just for poop and laughter. I'm gon na see how long they stay on i'm gon na put them on a timer and see it's quite a while, i would say a good 10 15 minutes would be my guess, uh and nothing seems to affect it like. I said: there's no back lighting on. If we turn on the actual marker lights, you know the back lighting lights up, it's just kind of bizarre.

I don't know if that has something to do with the battery going dead business or what the story is, and it may seem irrelevant to you to know how long they stay on, but it may be relevant in the future when we know like if it's an Exact period of time like they sit on exactly five minutes well, it might be helpful. I'm gon na do that, like this kion we've got the stopwatch key off start the stopwatch, and then we wait there. Folks, uh coincidence, i think not uh 10 minutes in a second. So what's that mean erico? I don't know it means that lights shut off after 10 minutes, which could be a module timing out more than likely.

If i had to take a big fat guess, that's what i would think uh we can do it again definitively to see like every single time it shuts off in the same exact amount of time, because that would be something to know, but being that my belly Told me it's about 10 minutes uh, and then we see that it is 10 minutes, uh, good guess, uh. My part, i guess so we'll just kind of keep that in our mind, um. I don't believe if they were shorted if they were shorted to a power source, obviously they'd be on all the time or something like that, but it's just something that we need to know uh. Now we have to proceed.

We can check out the battery draw. We got ta check out the engine light, don't know if any of that stuff's related - i doubt it uh. The car did come from an auction now that makes it junk because not all cars at the auction are junk, but every junk car is at the auction. What's up, mrs all, you dressed like that for me today.
Always at this point in time, i'm gon na go eat some lunch with my bride. I've got, the car, doors are opened, door switches are pinched off door, latches are tripped, key is off, doors are locked. The system is armed. I took the power supply off it, i'm going to let it sit while i go eat lunch, we're going to come back.

We're gon na see how much current is being drawn from the battery. What's killing this battery uh see if we can't trace down that circuit, so we can write it down and then we're gon na move on with the check engine light uh see if the two items are related or not that way we can give our used car Guy the full list - and he can say yay or nay - and we can move on. Oh several hours - have passed where's the time gone. I do not know, but lunch is over uh.

We dug out the amp meter here we're going to go to a graphing meter. We will go amps internal, we'll jack, her up, that's up to 10 amps on this little guy. We can float through it and that's where we'll start we'll start right up on the high scale i'll set this over here, where nobody can see it, i get it just right, we'll get a glare to be perfect, we're going to loosen up the negative battery terminal. We don't want to lose connection, though so we're just going to kind of wiggle it wiggle it up here.

Keeping it tight. Look one lead to the cable there get the other lead hooked under here. Whoa, that's a big honky, tonk! 2.5 amps! That's a big one! Folks that battery indeed would go dead very quickly at the 2.6 amp range. Now, like i said, i hear something humming, but i i've walked around this car 10 times here and i can't identify it just kind of weird uh.

What i think we should do is we'll approach it. Like anything, you know, we know that there's something humming there's something turned on um, we'll go into the fuse box here, see which fuse is drawing the current by measuring the voltage drop across them and then once we find the offending fuse, we'll yank it out see If our draw goes away and then we'll have to look on a diagram to see what it runs get out, this meter here we're going to set her up on the millivolt scale. I've done a couple: videos on it: uh testing your car to see why the battery dies overnight. So you can refer to them.

If you want to know the exact method, this is all broke. The exact method we're using so this is already somebody's already been in here now we're going to rip down the fuses when i get it where you guys can see or not um, i think these come right out, they're appearing well, we'll start up on the top. We'll go right down through them see if we can find out who's. The we're looking for is zero.

Millivolts a voltage drop across each fuse. There's a bad guy right there we can keep going, but that one is as a voltage drop of 12.6 millivolts. It is one two three, four five, six, seven, eight right, eight in eight number, eight, let's see what that one is: we'll go one, two, three, four: five: six, seven, eight at ecu automatic trans ecu; let's get a pair of pliers; that's probably over here, humming um. Can you guys see this meter here also because i'm good like that two point: five, seven, one: two, three, four, five, six, seven eight number eight out she goes and the current draw is down to 0.8 milliamps.
So still too much 800 milliamps is too much. So what we need to do now, uh, perhaps is give it some time just a minute. I no longer hear our humming uh, so that's good, so that's part of a draw. I'm gon na give it a little more time here to see if this 800 milliamp draw.

Perhaps that will go away now that the transmission module, i assume, has transmission module transmission, automatic trans ecu yeah. Now, training ecu is powered down, we'll see if that goes away. In the meantime, i'm going to keep poking along my fuses here to see where this other 800 milliamps is coming from and then we'll take it from there. I didn't find any more in that bottom row on the ipdm and also after quite a long time.

Nothing changed. You know it stayed around that 785 milliamps. Now i came in here to check the interior fuse box and foolishly i bumped my vice grip. So the horn blew once because the alarm went off and then it blew the fuse into meters and then we had to wait again.

Another 10 minutes. However, while i was waiting for the headlights to time our the marker lights, i went through this fuse box and i found that this fuse right here has about a three millivolts, a voltage drop. So that is one two three four five, six seven number eight from the bottom. We look at the legend, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Oh it's the highlighted one.

They even tell us what the problem is. The problem is your electronic parts. Thanks nissan uh, which one was it again here this one here i think let's uh, let's yank it out and see, let's see if that draw goes away. Where are we at we're at seven? I can't see it from my angle 780.

Something see if this helps us at all come on baby. Would that get us down to three and a quarter we're getting better, still, not perfect, not even close um. That's kind of bizarre folks, we'll leave. Of course, that's a special little fuse.

I'm gon na leave this down here, i'm gon na. Let that sit for a little while see if it you know, see if more stuff times out 300 milliamps is still too much. I'm going over things here. Re checking my steps and we're down to 150 milliamps, and i found some voltage drop across.

One of these fuses are kind of specialized and that one goes in the box here and the voltage drop is across the 40 amp portion of the fuse. So i popped the lid off it and was able to check that because when that's installed i'll just stick it back in there something over. There clicks turns back off and then we're back to almost 300 milliamps 280 ish. So i'm going to pull that out and leave that out and i got to start making notes of what is making the draw and um see if i can start to find some connections between each of these items.
At this point before i go digging through diagrams or anything, i decided to play one of the oldest games in automotive history and is the classic gang of poke and hope, and that's what we did. So you see we're down to 12 milliamps with the fuses reinstalled. Now that is with this fuse back in and then the fuse that we yanked out for the trans, where that was over here back in, however, this relay has been removed and it's this relay here on the end, because in the last this last ditch effort to Find out where the heck this draws going, because i went over every visible fuse, i could find i decided to play the pluck the relay game - and i just started over here and so we'll just pull one relay at a time to see if it makes any Difference try to gather some data when i got to this little guy. Our draw went right to nothing, so i left this out.

Reinstalled the trainee fuse reinstalled. This big fuse and our current draw stayed down to this 12 milliamps. Now i did leave this interior fuse out that one that we pulled out in there wherever it is down the floor up from the you know, electronic parts uh when i put that one back in the draw was around 50 milliamps, but i decided for the time Being, let's leave it out we'll stick with this. You know 12 milliamp draw that we have and you can see, come over here.

Stick it back in lots of stuff turns on and starts clicking. It might be a very broad perspective to start looking at how we are gon na. You see we're on this five amps. You can see the lights turn back on, so that has something to do with all that mumbo jumbo.

So we yank it we're back down to where we need to be in the super low amperage range uh. So what we need to do now what's up miss, though, is we need to find out who's in charge, i'm in charge you're in charge. Unless there's a problem, then i'm not in charge um, we got ta find out who who oh look at this folks? Somebody already freaking knew this, because look at that, i didn't do that. I'd.

Take it out, son of a mother lover. Is this thing just mechanically stuck on? Let's go like this: did somebody give it the big squeeze like i give, mrs though, and now it's just stuck because pulling this one does no difference. However, this one's intact. Let's stick it in here.

If that son of a husky is just manually stuck on, wouldn't that be something this is, though, let's see oh you little bastard. Look at that no draw. I didn't even notice that when i pulled it out the first time, that's something i've never been good at hey misses all there's that. So, let's flip that background.
Put that around put that in for me. Would you look it? I didn't do that young lady watch. Let me pull them out. These are not pulling out that hurt, i'm barely squeezing them.

This is how i'm taking them out. Am i crushing it? Oh, no, that one's not crushed oops, i'm barely squeezing these suckers. It's not, i'm not doing that to them. So somebody else has already been down this road huh.

I sure didn't. Do this come on little guy. Well, this one's kind of broken too, which one the one yeah, the one that we swapped with yeah. I didn't do, there's no way, i'm crushing them! Oh, you should replace both of them.

Oh so now you just want to start heaving parts huh, it's broken. I understand water's gon na get in there it's in there under the hood. What did we do with this? Oh, let me see him. We got ta see if we get a couple new ones uh.

I called napper uh one to see. If they wanted to sponsor us. They said no, they told me to pound sand uh. They didn't.

I called them uh to see if they had the relay and they don't so. They told me to pound sand. So i sent my boy josh because he's here going like this he's thumb twiddling because he thought he was done with his work for the day. Oh because we had one no-show, jerks and then uh, so i sent him down to the wilbert's.

You pulled a bath, also, not a sponsor to see. If you could find us a nissan relay, so we got the correct one. However, i made an observation, probably i'm leaving i was showing we were talking about this. We laughed everything.

I see the problem. This problem was created, obviously, but even better. Yet i got ta see if you guys can see this. Let me tune down my light.

There. She's on low speed, look in the side of that relay, so there's the plastic envision that you took the plastic and you smashed it in bend it around and pushed in the contact on the relay. Well i'll, be jiggered! If that ain't, what i think happened because look at that. You see the plastic in there whenever somebody grabbed it with whatever they grabbed it with the yank it out, it shoved the plastic in, and i believe it is holding against the load side contact in there and i've got a suspicion of what they grab this with, Which is what i've grabbed relays with in the past is hose pinch, pliers, fantastic for pulling fuses for getting fuel line, connectors, unhooked and such, but i'm pretty sure let me grab a pair of them.

I'll show you it's these little guys right here, fantastic when you got some arthritic fingers and your fingers hurt and you need to get in on something get hoses get connectors. These things work great. However, one thing they don't work great for is grabbing a relay, something like that trying to get it out. That's what i envisioned happen here.

I've used these myself guilty guilty as charge. Hang me grabbing relays like this pulling to get them out, because you can't get these little sons of bees out um without grabbing on to them. I have found, though, that my kiwi pliers, wherever they went, work fantastic. I don't know where they are.
I've lost them already, they work great and they look like the kiwi bird. Hence the name, not the fruit, where's, the thunder arts. My boy josh took him with him, that's where they are, but you guys have seen them in the past. Those are my favorite fuse pulling pliers, however, relay pulling can sometimes be a son of a husky.

I've bought relay pulling pliers and they're all garbage. These were great kiwi players work great. These can cause problems, as you can see. So i'm wondering in theory if we take and reach up in there with a pick and we flick that little piece out.

Let's get a little pick here. Well, it's kind of floating around in there right now at the let's bust it out the rest of the way. So we get the piece all the way out. Yeah.

Oh, you did a good thing, you're, not a brain surgeon. We go plastics broke out of there. Now, but i do believe this is the contact side of the relay. That's me: making the noise between dollars donuts, we plug it in it, works now 0.13 amps, unless you guys can't see it from.

I don't want to accidentally hook. It here, wow, just like that. Somebody's ding dong move yanking relays caused this problem caused our lights to remain on um. We could look into this super deep and say: let's pull this out again, we could look into this super deep and say well.

Why did they turn off after 10 minutes blah blah blah we'd have to look to see what power is this relay? You know all kinds of crap like that: we're not going to get into it. We found the problem. We don't care we're moving on uh wait for josh to get back over either i'm going to put that fuse back on the inside and then we're just going to have to redo our test when we're done and lucky for the used car guy. I think he bought this thing for a song, because it has these problems, so he's going to be into me for a few hours of what we've done and then whatever the rest of this stuff is and be able to flip a profit and not go out Of business that sounds like a reality show if erico can't fix this car, he may have to lose his business and he's got to have it done by midnight tonight and he's already over budget.

Something like that. So you're just gon na randomly just walk around with your camera until he gets back yep. That's what i said. We got nothing to do nothing to kill but time nothing but time to kill.

Doesn't it that's not like i'm looking for something to kill? What's the matter with this guy, so tell us what you tell us the rest of the upgrades you're doing your office besides uh the fact that we did some wiring not bragging, but there's my wiring job, all right. We haven't gone up in the attic yet to move the outlets so calm down. The blue tape is not permanent and, as red and green says, it's only temporary unless it works so there's uh. Oh, is there stuff on your desk? I can't see i wanted to say: come here, luna come here, come here, pumpkin come here, yeah go, that's oh luna looks so rough, so luna was a nice straight cat she's outside doing straight cat things hanging out with all the other neighbor cats getting pregnant, and Then we took her in and now she's a train wreck.
Look at poor luna come here. Luna she had to. She had to go, see doctor snip. So now she's got uh some stitches and whatnot.

There's no stitches, that's glued! Oh! They super glued her yeah. So she was outside doing little cat things and next thing you know, she's in a kitty carrier she's got shots for fleas and shots for rabies and shots for everything and got her insides cut out. That's because we love you. Yes, we do it's a good girl.

I know enough poor little kitty, yeah he's a poor baby, my man josh. He made it back, so here's our two ogs, the cracked one and the one that we you know finished, punching the hole in. He grabbed us a few of these down at wilbert's uh. A couple bucks for those all matching numbers, so we're going to take and stick these in, stick that one in there we will put this one in there.

The inside fuse that we took out. I put that back in close the glove box re-latched and shut the door. It's going to throw the lid back on this i'll, let it i'll start it run it for a little bit. Let it sit we'll recheck the draw.

If we're back down to you know that 40 milliamps or wherever it ends up, you know below 50 adios we're good but a while it's quitting time still holding steady at 84 milliamps. I don't know if you guys can see that or not but 84 to 85. That's where it's at folks uh until i know any better, i'm going to leave it at that. We're going to pick up on this uh after the weekend might kind of on and off this truck uh quite a bit today.

Hopefully, this video is cohesive, comes together correctly, and we all know where we're at interesting problem there with the relay and stuff. I am got my suspicions, though, folks, that there is more to this story than what we're finding right now, um somebody's been fiddling. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. That's a famous quote from a man named albert hubbard, and that is a predicament we are in here.

Folks, as you can see, the knee sand is down to 13 to 20 milliamps now, depending on whether or not the little led security light flashes inside we just needed patience folks. Evidently, these take several hours for everything to turn off and go to sleep, giving us the results. We're looking for this baby is fixed.

By EricO

11 thoughts on “Used Car Guy Special: Nissan Frontier Battery Draw”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jonathan Jay says:

    I like watching your videos, I learn something new all the time. You've taught me everything I know about parasitic draw. Your a great teacher

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars John Pilgrim says:

    I had a bear of a battery drain issue today. It was a 2015 town and country van and something on the interior can bus was keeping everything from going to sleep. It would constantly act like it was about to go to sleep and instantly wake back up. You could hear the cluster click every minute or so and the little led on the overhead console would turn off an on with the click. The was a pinched harness in the lower track of the drivers side sliding door causing it. What made it so bad is that the interior can has no star connector and the wiring diagram is almosy impossible to decipher. Just had to disconnect in-line connectors where I could to try to split up the system and eventually found it. There was nothing in the modules data stream that would lead you to believe it had any issues that would keep it awake. All of the switches were showing to be closed and everything. I hate when they donโ€™t give you a breakout on these communication lines when there is that many modules scattered all over the car.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Frank Hinde says:

    Brilliant.. At least thats what I told myself because I would have pulled the relays before the fuses.. But then, sometimes even the blind mouse get the nut..:)

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Nature and Physics says:

    My mom's Taurus: overnight battery failure. Her mechanic's diagnosis: stuck door latch causing dome light to stay on. Her mechanic's fix: remove dome bulb forever. Mom: He's the expert!

    Sighhhhh

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars juancarlos artola says:

    minimo…………thank you masther eric O because i learn so much question mr. eric when using a pinza amperes where have to be connected in negative o positive cable baterie…..thank you very much …….forever and ever……..

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bass Hunter says:

    Ok, so one thing escapes me….. that being, why was the "culprit" poking around in the fuse box in the 1st place? With no issues other than the "crushed" relay, and the weird way it was crushed, could it be sabotage? I know, I'm jumping to conclusions, but it just seems odd that with no appearent issues besides the relay.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Michael Ault says:

    I had a battery drain problem. I came out to a dead battery. I put it on a charger and fully charged the battery. Car started and ran. Couple of days later battery was dead. I figured it out when I left in another car and came home to see the brake lights on. It was a broken stop on the brake pedal that contacts the break light switch. With oil ut the stop the lights stayed on.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Craig Riker says:

    Great diagnostics with all those fancy tools…. I'm old school shade tree mechanic and use a DVM just like you did on the negative battery terminal, this method has never let me down. I own a Nissan and had a minor current draw and found it funny how Nissan labels for a lack of better words "ELECTRONIC PARTS", that just about covers everything. And now we meet the boss! I mean the wife… you lucky man!

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Charles Ball says:

    The fact that the lights turned off after 10 minutes is the thing where accessory power is cut after 10 minutes of continuous use with the engine off. I noticed the interior lights of my truck turn off if I leave the door open (like when I was working on my truck, replacing the window motors)

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars jjt228 says:

    i think this was a carmax car. i work at one and the window sticker and yellow marker pen on the windshield looks familiar. wouldn't be surprised being an auction car. we send tons of cars to auction every day for frame issues electrical gremlins etc.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Notsofast L says:

    Your my last hope. Any advice?
    -1998 Lexus ES 300 engine died while driving slowly for a couple hours, (teaching my daughter to drive in parking lot) No BATT light came on.
    -Jump started and drove home fine.
    -Batt was at 12.2 volts and charging 12.5 under load. Rev engine and gets 12.8.
    -Replaced that 3 month old Denso and put a new Denso alternator on with same results.
    -Using a video of yours I had acceptable voltage drop.
    -Took it to shop and they confirm bad alternator.
    -Took it to auto electric specialty shop and they ran tests on all positive and ground wires and said all is good and told me alternator was bad.
    -I bought a Ultima alternator and get all the same readings.
    -Initial startup 14.1v no load. As the minutes go by it drops to 11.3 under load.
    -Battery tested by both shops and by 2 local parts stores. Battery is 8 months old.

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